South Asia Daily

Of disembodied voices and masquerades

Terry Gross, the iconic host of NPR’s signature interview show ‘Fresh Air’ (Pic: Will Ryan, www.npr.org)

Have you noticed how a disembodied radio voice almost invariably fails to live up to one’s feverishly imagined image of its possessor? For me it began in my childhood with the two most pervasive voices on India’s airwaves for generations—those of singers Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi.

If memory serves me right, I think I saw the pictures of the two more than 20 years after I had so intuitively known their voices. The mystique was broken that day. I had by no means imagined Mangeshkar and Rafi to be the world’s most beautiful people. In fact, beauty was not even part of my imagination, even though I had a very definite expectation what they ought to look like on the basis of their voices.

However, the chasm between what the two really looked like and what I had wanted them to look like was enormous. It was as if I had been swindled by their faces long after I had been seduced by their voices. Of course, that reaction was entirely a reflection on me rather than Mangeshkar and Rafi. When I say the mystique was broken what I am actually saying is that a disembodied voice is poor clay to build a whole person out of.

I never met Rafi but did get to interview Mangeshkar once, thanks entirely to my friend Shireesh Kanekar. When she asked “Chaha ghenar ka? (Will you have tea?)” in Marathi, the voice behind that banal question sounded so arrestingly familiar that I looked around the room to make sure that it was not coming from some invisible source.

Since then there have been other voices which have not matched their mental images. There was the voice of Ameen Sayani, for decades India’s most familiar host conducting its most enduringly popular radio hit parade. It would be safe to say that Sayani was the voice that arbitrated popular Hindi cinema music. I met the man close to 20 years after I had grown up listening to his voice. When he greeted me at his office in Bombay in the mid 1980s, for a moment I thought he was a mimic channeling Sayani and not Sayani himself. It was as if some strange man was lipsynching Ameen Sayani.

Another voice, which has mercifully remained a voice after decades, was that of Shameem Qureishi, a broadcaster on the All India Radio’s Urdu Service. I don’t know what he looks like to this day, which is just as well because who knows what might happen to the mystique around his voice if I found out what he looks like?

Yet another radio voice that has become a subject of that feverish imagining in the last five years belongs to Terry Gross, the iconic host of NPR’s signature interview show ‘Fresh Air.’ Hers was not an image that was fully formed in my mind like those of Mangeshkar, Rafi and Sayani but my mind had begun to extrapolate a look from the voice. Then I saw her on ‘The Colbert Report’ the other day. The mystique was radically rearranged. It was not broken because it had not yet been fully formed.

There is a common underlying theme to my reactions to all the disembodied voices. I feel as if the person out of whom a particular voice is coming is a masquerade. So when I saw Terry Gross talking to Stephen Colbert I had this weird sense of having been tricked.

None of what I feel has anything to do with the people I am talking about. It has everything to do with the way my mind works.

Some ideas for Jaipur Literature Festival, 2013

Given my unique standing in the world of literature, journalism, security and graphic art I have designed a possible logo for The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), 2013. It is still early days but the one above could make the cut.

I am also suggesting that the organizers lay down the following conditions for participating authors and panelists.

It is mandatory for authors and panelists to carry a/an:

* Reinforced steel helmet

* Bulletproof vest

* Firearm

* Attorney

* Olympic grade running shoes

The order of the conditions above is not random but very carefully thought through.  If the first two do not work, try the third, failing which turn to the fourth and, if everything fails, just run. We learned that in the festival that just concluded some authors exercised the last option first which was a bad  idea, not to mention an embarrassing one.

The festival authorities should set up a store at the entrance of the venue to sell JLF branded helmets, vests, firearms, running shoes and attorneys. To make the merchandise attractive, the festival should offer early registration discount. The money earned from the sale of the branded merchandise can help minimize the festival’s dependence on corporate sponsors whose balls can be easily twisted by the government.

Additionally, the festival organizers should require a disclosure from all those who are planning to read passages from works banned in India to bring their own handcuffs to save the local police the trouble to bring so many.

This is just the first draft of what can be done. I propose to have a more comprehensive blueprint ready soon. I will not be able to share this for reasons of client confidentiality.

A few uncalled for observations on January 26

(Left to Right) Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, India’s President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the annual Republic Day Parade on January 26 in New Delhi (Pic: The Press Information Bureau of India)

On India’s 63rd Republic Day today, a few uncalled for observations.

As I see the picture above I am paralyzed by an utterly frivolous urge. Let India and Thailand exchange prime ministers, Manmohan Singh for Yingluck Shinawatra, even if it is for a short while. I hardly need to tell you why but I will.

The 45-year-old Shinawatra fits the Indian demographic so much better when you consider that there are 550 million Indians under the age 25. At 79, Dr. Singh is several generations removed from the aspirations of nearly half of the country’s population.

It might also help to have a president whose handshake is not limp. See the picture below showing Shinawatra’s hand on the left and Patil’s on the right. It almost feels as if Patil is palming off a blob of play doh to Shinawatra. Incidentally, Dr. Singh has a similar handshake.

While I am on the subject, India’s Defence Minister A K Antony is in dire need of sartorial rescue by the US Navy Seal team 6. If you don’t believe me see Antony’s picture below.

India’s Defence Minister A K Antony

A lot of Indian politicians labor under the impression that they look handsome in that Himachali headgear of the kind Antony is wearing. Most of them look like clowns that circuses superannuated.

And finally, I think Dr. Singh can do with some animation in his public engagements. If you don’t believe me, see the picture below.

Prime Minister Singh

Give war of words a chance

A war of words has broken out between the US and Iran. The US fired question marks and exclamation marks with occasional dashes and hash signs even as Iran shot back a barrage of semicolons,comas, hyphens and full stops. There was an occasional diplomatic exchange over syntactical correctness but mostly it was an explosion of bombastic words.

Early reports about casualties were unclear but eyewitnesses spoke of many  fractured and fragmented sentences strewn along the border. Several dictionaries were standing by to receive badly wounded words for emergency surgeries. Synonyms, a sort of national reserve guards, were on the ready to replace the wounded and antonyms were being dressed up to counter Iran’s phraseology.

While most of the exchange was conducted in English in keeping with the Geneva Convention, Tehran craftily employed its ancient war tactic of waylaying the enemy by using some complex Farsi phrases. War experts were surprised that Iran would use its choicest weapons so early in the conflict but that was attributed to their new war strategy to overwhelm the adversary early.

Unprepared for the rarely used weapon of Farsi, the US forces had to go into a strategic retreat, reload its arsenal with Google Translation and return. What was expected to be a brutal ambush, in fact, turned out to be surprisingly gentle as the translation revealed that Iran was actually using Saadi’s more spiritual poetry.

I can go on about the war of words but I suppose you get the drift. I think the world should try war of words more often than it does whenever countries have serious disagreements. Words don’t die and they certainly don’t cost. So why not?

I nearly told you so, twice

Far be it for me to say I told you so but I almost did tell you so.Not once but twice in a span of four days.

My January 20 blog said this about the threat to author Salman Rushdie's life in India. "I hope the intelligence reports are not just an expedient device that someone in the bureaucratic establishment is using to get around this ticklish issue. Perhaps that someone reasoned that if Rushdie were to be warned of a “credible” plot to assassinate him, would he still take the chance and visit for the greater glory of the freedom of speech?" Well, that earns me some bragging rights to at least say, "I nearly told you so."

There are already news reports in India that the threat was manufactured to keep Rushdie from the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).

Then yesterday I wrote what I thought was a spoof about fictional Mumbai mobsters planning a hit on a fictional author by shutting down his video address at an event. I was careful enough not to make it an obvious reference to Rushdie by describing the fictional author, in the immortal words of Pistool Ganja, as “chusa hua aam” or sucked out/shriveled up mango. Rushdie is still like a ripe Kashmiri apple. So no similarity there.

This morning I read the news that Rushdie’s video address to the JLF was canceled in the face of a mob of angry Muslims threatening violence. One of them was quoted by the IANS as saying, “He (Rushdie) is a criminal writer as far as Muslims are concerned. He has insulted Prophet Mohammed and there is no way we will let him speak even if he is doing so from abroad. There will be trouble if the speech by Rushdie goes ahead. Muslims are never afraid of dying.”

So what is going on is that real life is writing the next plot of Rushdie’s novel. All that he has to do is report what is going on. There is enough magic realism and the theater of the absurd in it.

Speaking of the theater of the absurd, what Rajdeep Sardesai, a high profile news anchor (Aren’t they all high profile?), tried to do was priceless. During a debate on the Rushdie visit controversy, Rajdeep tried to end his show on a high note. Among the four panelists were Asaduddin Owaisi, a Member of Parliament representing Hyderabad, and writer and freedom of speech activist Ruchir Joshi. Before I quote the exchange, here is a bit of a background on the two men in the context of the controversy.

Owaisi has found in the embarrassing controversy an embarrassment of political riches to assert himself as the new uncompromising voice of the Muslim community. He seems to have succeeded. And Joshi has cast himself on the other side, having controversially read excerpts from ‘The Satanic Verses’, Rushdie’s 1988 book which is banned in India. It is hardly surprising that the two men can’t stand each other.

So Rajdeep, in keeping with the highest tradition of journalism, tried to extract an invitation for a sumptuous Hyderabadi meal from Owaisi to Joshi on national television.

Rajdeep: Will you invite Ruchir Joshi…you you cook some of the best Hyderabadi food I know? Is it possible to bring you and Ruchir Joshi together and resolve this?

Owaisi: No, I am extremely sorry Rajdeep, I cannot invite to my house a person who blasphemes my prophet. The lessons that can be learnt from this debate is please be within the confines of law…Criticize Islam, you have all the right but there is a difference between blasphemy and criticism… You cannot question my identity in the garb of your liberalism.”

While Owaisi was smacking down social graces Joshi’s hand reflexively went up to his forehead as if to scratch an non-existent itch. It was an involuntary gesture of exasperation.

Joshi responded saying this: India is a vast and plural country where 90 percent of the people can’t read. We have waited 23 years to hope that some kind of reasonable attitude will be shown by the extremists. We are now done with patience Chetan (Bhagat). We have tried to hope that they would see sense…We would continue to our non-violent protest. If the law is bad, it will go. New, better laws will be replaced through our efforts and we will continue to lodge our nonviolent protest and whatever that entails we are all willing to do. Okay?”

So okay. There you have it. Both sides are intransigent and therefore perfect for the hungry 24/7 broadcast news beast.

On a slightly trivial note, India is not 90 percent illiterate as Joshi said. The general literacy rate is 75.06%, 82.14% for men and 65.46% for women, according to the 2011 census. Even if you factor in political exaggeration it is not less than 70% overall. Even in 1947, when India became an independent country, the literacy rate was 12%, which makes the illiteracy then lower than 90%.

That said, literacy does not necessarily translate into education, knowledge and enlightenment.

Ganja Pistoolwaley plans a hit

Ganja Pistoolwaley a.k.a. Pistool Ganja nervously pulled his underwear wedged deep inside his buttocks. Unexpected phone calls from his boss Raqeeb Tadipar had that effect on him.

Pistoolwaley stood up whenever Tadipar called. Unlike in the past, with video phones Tadipar would know instantly if his underlings were sufficiently deferential when he called. He didn’t like his men sitting around because he thought that made them slow on the draw.

It was only during extreme emergencies when Tadibhai (as Raqeeb was known) would call himself. The hit Tadibhai was calling Ganja about involved a high profile author.

“Han Tadibhai. Mein khada hai na. Mein to kabhi kidhar baithta hai?” Ganja said with insincere obsequiousness. (Yes, Tadibhai I am standing up. Do I ever sit down?)

“Saaley, yeh video phone hai. Mein dekh sakta hai. Abhi supari ka photu SMS kiyela hai,” Tadibhai said. (This is a video phone. I can see you. I have just SMSed a picture of the hit).

Ganja: “Han bhai mila na. Dekha. Boley to aadmi to chusey hue aam ki mafik lagta hai.” (Got it. The man looks like a shriveled up mango.)

Tadibhai: “To yeh kaun sa chikna hero hai. Sala kitaab likhta rehta hai.” (He is no slick movie star. The bastard writes books).

Ganja: “To likhne do na bhai. Apney ko kya karne ka hai? Apan log kidhar padh sakta hai?” (So let him write.What do we care? We are illiterate anyway.)

Tadipar: “Arey who sab mereku mat sikha. Aaj kal teri zabaan pistul se zyada chalti hai) (Don’t teach me all that. These days you talk more than your pistol.)

Sensing Tadibhai’s irritation, Ganja immediately corrected himself. “Tadibhai, mein to aise hi gammat kiya. Aap ne bola aur sala writer dola.” (Tadibhai, I am kidding. You say the word and the writer is gone).

Tadibhai: “Arey Pistool teri ma ki usko dolane ka nahi hai rey. Woh video pe aa ke kuch bhashan dene wala hai. Uska bhashan rokna hai.” (Hey Pistool, he is not to be bumped off. He is giving a video speech. That speech should not happen.)

Ganja: “Boley to zinda rakhne ka par acting nahi karne ka” (That means he may live but not act)

Tadibhai: “Ab ghusi baat tere bheje mein goli ka tarha. Yeh hona mangta hai.” (Now sense has entered your brain like a bullet. This needs to happen)

Tadibhai’s menacing face went off Ganja’s phone. Ganja placed a call, also a video call, to his trusted tech support Chandu Ghaslet.

Chandu stood up as he answered the call. “Han Pistoolbhai. Mujhe kyun yaad kiya?) (Yes Pistool, how come you remembered me?)

Ganja: “Yeh address likh. Idhar kal ek video bhashan hai. Who bandh kara.” (Take this address. There is a video speech scheduled there tomorrow. Stop it.)

Chandu Ghaslet, who hardly ever figured in any of the exciting hits that his gang carried out, was thrilled to have been called. Naturally, he felt he needed to make this his best job.

Ghaslet: “Video bhashan matlab bandwidth bada zyada hoga. Mein 30 mein se 15 frame drop kara dunga. Sala breakdance ke jaisa lagega woh writer.” (Video speech means high bandwidth. I can drop 15 of the 30 frames. He would be so jerky he would look like a breakdancer).

Ganja: “Ey Ghaslet, baat sun le. Band wand kuchch nahi. Udhar ja, do kan ke neeche baja aur cable kaat dal.” (Hey Ghaslet, listen to me. Forget bandwidth. Go there, thrash a couple of them and cut the cable).

Ganja disconnected.

So now we wait to see what happens.

 

Note: Excuse the inordinate use of the Mumbai street lingo. I had no choice because that’s how these tough guys talk.

A few observations about Oprah Winfrey in India

Oprah Winfrey (Pic: screen grab from ndtv.com)

I have been looking for a standout gig on the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) for myself. I found one this morning. Not having ever attended it, I think it is a great gig never to attend it in the future. And yet feel no compunctions whatsoever in holding forth on it.That could well be a defense mechanism going up against the fact I never get invited to such events. It is not a case of grapes being sour but grapes being non-existent.

There, with that out of the way let me say a thing or two about Oprah Winfrey’s interview by NDTV’s Barkha Dutt, India’s most high profile television anchor, at the festival. Winfrey has been in India for the past few days on her first visit, partly to shoot a chapter of a new show and partly to see for herself a country frenzied on her surface and tranquil at her core. That’s a great myth about India but it is so compelling that I will let that pass.

Mutual admiration societies have a way of forming effortlessly in the kind of convivial and salubrious setting of festivals in India. The JLF being one such festival it is not surprising that people try and put their best foot forward, unless, of course, if you happen to be Salman Rushdie. Then the foot is on your throat. But I digress.

Dutt introduced Winfrey with somewhat breathless, albeit fully deserved, praise. Winfrey in turn seemed awestruck by the fact that Dutt said all that she did without a teleprompter. My immediate thought at the exchange, admittedly churlish and sophomoric, was that from now on it has to be Barkha Winfrey and Oprah Dutt. The switch has a certain cadence to it. (Check, one more gratuitous comment out of the way).

I can review the whole interview but I think it would be sufficient to make an observation or two about a couple of points. Among the things that Winfrey says she was struck by immediately on her arrival in Mumbai (being reflective and contemplative not to mention ruminant, she noticed more profound things too) was how Indian drivers treat traffic lights.

“What is it with the red lights? I mean does the red light mean stop or not? Or is it just there for your entertainment? What is this? The light is red and everybody just keeps going. You all seem to know what you’re doing,” Winfrey said in her world famous tone of polite and amused incredulity.

I think Winfrey unwittingly raised a deep civilizational question when she wondered like Seinfeld, “What is it with the red lights?” I will tell you what the deal with the red lights is. The red light is to the the average Indian driver, of four wheelers, two wheelers, three wheelers and occasionally uni-wheelers, is what the red rag is to a bull. It is an invitation to charge and not stop. Because it is a rule, not only must it be broken but trampled upon. In laws lies the irresistible possibility and thrill of breaking them. The first instinct in India is to how to get around doing something that is mandated by law. It is a civilization that has for long had gloriously comprehensive laws on its statute books and that’s where they have mostly stayed.

Another point that Dutt touched upon was Winfrey’s visit to the widows of Vrindavan. These women are a profoundly shameful rebuke of the lofty claims of family values. These are the women who have been not just cast aside but castigated simply because their husbands died before them. Although the practice is not as widespread as it seems, it is prevalent enough to have a large number of them living in the ancient town of Vrindavan, the putative of hub of Krishna’s childhood in Uttar Pradesh. A lot has been written and filmed about this revoltingly obscurantist and abhorrent practice.

I am sure Winfrey was struck by the cruel contradiction of a country that still prides herself in her joint family system and yet tolerates the widows of Vrindavan. Answering Dutt’s question what struck her the most about her visit, Winfrey spoke of three things. One of which was the sense of family.

“The sense of family tradition..I now get it. I really get the sense of how glorious it is that this is a country that has no respect for nursing homes because you take care of your families and you don’t put your families in nursing homes,” she said.

Unless of course if you are a widow in northern parts of India, in which case you are likely to be packed off to Vrindavan to be among other widows leading this grotesquely imagined life of loneliness away from your family simply because the husband died. And without a husband what are you if not a wretched shadow of a human being shrouded in a white sari and tonsured head stewing in your own misery?

I am sure Winfrey could not square the “glorious” practice of taking care of one’s family with the widows of Vrindavan. She should not even try it because it would be like trying to understand why drivers do not stop at the red lights. They do either because they can.

 

‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’

A book that is getting a lot of buzz these days is “Behind the Beautiful Forevers—Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity’ by Katherine Boo.

The book is preceded by high praise, some of which calls it the best book of narrative non-fiction in a quarter century. Author and historian Ramchandra Guha says, “Without question the best book yet written on contemporary India. Also, the best work of narrative nonfiction I’ve read in twenty-five years.”

Kirkus Review calls it “The best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition.”

Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen says, “A beautiful account, told through real-life stories, of the sorrows and joys, the anxieties and stamina, in the lives of the precarious and powerless in urban India whom a booming country has failed to absorb and integrate. A brilliant book that simultaneously informs, agitates, angers, inspires, and instigates.”

There is a word for something that “simultaneously informs, agitates, angers, inspires, and instigates” –- it’s called life.

The book’s publishers, Random House, describes it thus:

“In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”

But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.”

P.S.: You can see that I have taken the path of least resistance in this post by merely copy-pasting publicity blurbs. There is a reason for that. I woke up with pure ennui this morning. I think it was set off by having to shovel six inches of snow yesterday. And snow, I can assure you, does not take the path of least resistance while being shoveled.

Why bite the bullet?

What woke me up this morning a little earlier than my normal 4.30 a.m. was muffled but distinctly audible exultation. At first I attributed it to the dawn dreamscape that often washes over me. However, as I opened my regular news source of the IANS wire I knew what I heard probably emanated from the direction of Deoband in India.

I found out that author Salman Rushdie has called off his visit to India. Here is how the 64-year-old author explains the reason:

“For the last several days I have made no public comment about my proposed trip to Jaipur at the request of the authorities in Rajasthan, hoping that they would put in place such precautions as might be necessary to allow me to come and address the Festival audience in circumstances that were comfortable and safe for all.

I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to 'eliminate' me.

While I have some doubts about the accuracy of this intelligence, it would be irresponsible of me to come to the Festival in such circumstances; irresponsible to my family, to the festival audience, and to my fellow writers. I will therefore not travel to Jaipur as planned."

What this means immediately is that while the original fatwa issued against Rushdie’s life on February 14, 1989 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran may have lapsed, its mutations are still very much around nearly a quarter century later. The advent of information and knowledge century in the interim, it seems, has done nothing to contain our primal barbarism.

Let’s for the sake of argument take the Indian intelligence reports to be accurate. Does that mean that somewhere along the line the extreme Islamic religious establishment, such as it is, would at the very least take the path of least resistance were paid underworld assassins to carry out the hit? And who paid them? Also, at whose behest? I hope the intelligence reports are not just an expedient device that someone in the bureaucratic establishment is using to get around this ticklish issue. Perhaps that someone reasoned that if Rushdie were to be warned of a “credible” plot to assassinate him, would he still take the chance and visit for the greater glory of the freedom of speech?

It makes the question that I raised the other day—Should Rushdie be in a lifelong battle-ready mode?—particularly relevant. He does speak about his responsibility towards his family, the festival audience and fellow writers while choosing to cancel the visit. It is not worth his while even if the plot to assassinate him may be nothing more than some crafty intelligence bureaucrat’s way of preempting the difficult challenge of protecting him inside a chaotic literary festival.

It is safe to say that at least for the foreseeable future Rushdie will not be able to openly visit the country of his birth because the so-called paid assassins are unlikely to dismantle their weapons and mothball their telescopic sights right away. A doubt about his personal safety has been introduced not just in Rushdie’s mind but that of his family and friends who may advise him that it is simply not worth it.

In a way Rushdie’s decision to cancel can also be attributed to the bizarre calculus by India’s political establishment that they are better off not annoying nearly 20 million Muslims in the election-bound state of Uttar Pradesh, even though those 20 million have said nothing to indicate that they care whether the author came visiting.

Next time when Indian leaders brag about the country’s rising status as a “global superpower” let them remember that a mere a cleric in a grimy town can undermine their grandiosity.

‘Ukraine is not a brothel’

Ukrainian women’s rights group Femen members protest at the residence of Indian ambassador to Kiev. (Pic: femen.livejournal.com)

A group of topless Ukrainian women stormed the balcony of Indian Ambassador Rajiv K. Chander’s residence in capital Kiev. They were protesting because they believe the Indian embassy is denying visas to women between 15 and 40 amid reports that some of them go to India to engage in prostitution.

A newspaper report in India alleged that the issuance of visas to women between 15 and 40 had been made more rigorous because of the allegations of prostitution. The protestors belong to Femen, a women’s group that stages topless protests against various issues.

There are reports that India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had instructed embassies in former Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to vet visa applications from young women with greater scrutiny. The Indian embassy in Kiev has denied that it is following any such practice.

The Telegraph newspaper of Kolkata that reported the story said this:

“A senior MEA official said the report was “weird, if not mischievous and misplaced”.

“No such instructions have been issued. Visa officials are continuing to use their judgement in the issuance of visas, but there is no discrimination,” the official said, adding such restrictions would make every man a potential terrorist and every woman a potential sex worker.”

I went to Femen’s blog to get some more details about the protest. Since the blog is in Russian and its Google translation poor, I am not able to say precisely what it asserts. But the general tone is one of anger and rejection. “Ukraine is not a brothel! Ukrainka not prostitutes!” it says. I would not depend on the translation because of a line like this one: “Daily hundreds ukraynok, pыtayuschyhsya get visas, passes vыnuzhdenы pozornuyu procedure opravdanyya, dokazыvaya officials that they are not fucking.”

“Indian prostitution is directly conducted with impunity of the country’s criminal business. Blaming it on women is a shame for the heirs of such a rich and old culture,” The telegraph quotes the blog as saying.

Femen’s outrage is understandable because if the embassy operates under that particular instruction, it does amount to profiling. I am willing to take the Indian foreign ministry’s assertion that it does not practice discrimination at its face value, even though I would not be surprised if there are at least discreet guidelines to the effect.

Notwithstanding Femen’s protest, it is no secret in New Delhi that a number of women from the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, do come to the Indian capital because “the business here is good”, as one young  politician told me last year. It was a poorly disguised euphemism for prostitution.

The way the business operates is that young women from Central Asian countries visit on tourist visas for short durations and use their time in New Delhi to make tidy sums of money from businessmen and politicians. India’s booming economy has spawned a generation of young and successful businessmen with substantial spare cash to spend on personal entertainment. It is also a well known fact that there is a preference for white women among these businessmen.

On this one I am with Femen in so much as the group says that the embassy would end up perpetuating that unsavory reputation of Ukrainian women if it was indeed profiling those in the age group 15-40. Of course, visa issuance by any country has a built-in bias in the sense that it does eventually boil down to what a particular consular officer thinks at that particular time. Since visas are a privilege and not a right, it is never easy to prove why some get rejected. It could well be that the Indian embassy in Kiev does subject this age group of women to greater scrutiny.